She turned her attention back to Rory, whose mother was playing hide-and-seek between his now clean fingers. She chanced to turn around some twenty steps later to see Lord Lancaster standing quite still, his arms folded over his chest, staring after her.
He was tall, she thought again, and darker than a moonless night, and there was an edge to that darkness of his. It was as if he were seeing all them clearly but he himself was masked, hiding in the shadows. She was succumbing to fancies, not a very appealing thing for a lady who would doubtless become the village spinster.
Meggie saw Thomas Malcombe, Lord Lancaster, again the following Friday evening when the Strapthorpes held a small musical soir-ee—pronounced quite in the French way—the name Mrs. Sturbridge stubbornly held to despite her spouse’s contempt.
Mrs. Strapthorpe, far more voluble now that her daughter, Glenda, had married and left home, immediately pulled Mary Rose and Meggie aside and said in a rush, bristling with complacency and pride, “He doesn’t accept invitations, Mrs. Bittley told me, a recluse he is, she assured me, possibly he’s now ashamed he never visited his dear father in a good twenty years. Some folk remember a little boy and Lady Lancaster, but they were both gone very quickly.” She lowered her voice. “I heard it said that the earl divorced his wife. What do you think of that? But now this splendid young man—an earl—is here, at my invitation, because, and so I told Mr. Strapthorpe, I wrote an ever-so-elegant note to him and he accepted my invitation with an ever-so-elegant note of his own—ah, his hand is quite refined, let me assure you—and now Lord Lancaster is coming, can you imagine? Yes, I snagged him. He is ever so handsome and obviously quite proud. No, don’t mistake me, he isn’t at all standoffish, he simply knows his own worth and expects others to know it, too. Yes, he is coming and I believe it is because of my elegant invitation and my brilliant idea to hold a musical soir-ee. A gentleman of his distinction would most assuredly be drawn to an elegant offering. Yes, this evening is tailor-made for his tastes. I have brought in a soprano, all the way from Bath—she last performed at Lord Laver’s magnificent town house on the Royal Crescent—and she strikes a high C with great regularity and astounding verve. Such a pity Glenda is wed and far away, and only to a viscount, more’s the pity, but she wouldn’t wait, particularly since our dear Reverend Sherbrooke was gobbled right up by dear Mary Rose, so there it is. Of course she couldn’t have waited for Lord Lancaster since she is nearly his own age, because, for a lady, unmarried at such an advanced age would announce to the world that there were serious problems with either her father’s purse or her face.”
Mrs. Strapthorpe, after this outpouring, took a long overdue breath, shook out her purple satin skirts, and marched to the punch bowl, to guard it from her spouse, who was fat, sported three chins, and loved to drink until he was snoring too loudly in his chair. “So distracting for guests,” Mrs. Strapthorpe was wont to say.
“She has always amazed me,” Meggie said, staring after their hostess. Then she giggled. “She spoke nearly a complete chapter in a book, Mary Rose, and she never lost herself between commas. Remember when you and Papa were first married and he brought you here for a visit?” Mary Rose shuddered.
“And Glenda ordered him to take her to the conservatory—that miserably hot smelly room—and demanded to know how it had happened that he had wed you and not her?”
“I wanted, actually, to dance at her wedding,” Mary Rose said, smiling now at the memory. “At last she would no longer send her sloe-eyed looks at your father. Do you know that she has three children now?”
“These things happen,” Meggie said, grinning. “After all, you and Papa have given me Alec and Rory.” She remembered that Jeremy would be a father soon. But not the father of her child. No, she wasn’t about to think about that, she wasn’t.